What's this got to do with something having been done wrong? Paperwork shows you in debt? Maybe someone makes an offer. Paperwork shows family in China, Russia, or some other country? Maybe you get a phone call and find out that they're in a bit of trouble that you can help them with. You lack imagination to say the very least.

BTW if you go through one of those investigations and they find criminal wrong doing they prosecute you, it's often the FBI or their minions who do them. When I was questioned about a coworker who was applying for one they were nice enough to show me their badge. Gee, guess I'm one of the 14million then?

You know what, I don't give a flying hoot if it was China, North Korea, Russia, or some punk in Germany taking a whizz who whacked them. Frankly if they did this they did a damn good job and I'm impressed and hope like fuck we're doing the same thing to them. It's the JOB of spies to try to take stuff like this right?

And isn't it the JOB of the assclowns who have this data in their possession to PROTECT IT?! I work for a commercial company and we have ooddles of rules that force us to encrypt data, protect data, and make damned sure that stupid shit like geologic surveys are kept secure. Why in the hell did these fucking fools place this data on a system that could be hacked by any punk attached to the internet? Why did they value this data less than Mastercard, Visa, and American Express value my shopping history?! I have not yet heard a single solitary justification for why this data was together, apparently readily accessible, and connected. WHY WHY WHY?

I couldn't care less WHO did it, I care a GREAT deal as to why it was possible in the first place. Offering up free credit monitoring is a pathetic joke that makes me ill. Do they REALLY think that's the threat? that someone will crank out a few credit cards? If so then obviously the same jackasses that let this happen are still making decisions because that's nonsensical.

Ding ding! Obviously this information wasn't valuable at all since these jackalopes did fuck all to secure it right? Say, I wonder if any of those people who have these clearances have family overseas in areas where they might be vulnerable? Think they reported it? Money issues that might be revealed by salary vs debt? The list is ENDLESS but since they placed it on an internet accessible machine it's obvious that the data was worthless to these idiots. I REALLY REALLY think we need to see a head on the chopping block speaking into a large microphone to a large panel of lawyers and congress critters explaining to the 14million some off people why they were so fucking stupid! Even if you don't have a clearance you can easily be impacted by this just by having a friend or a family member that does and mentioned you to someone while they were being investigated. Truly the size of this blunder is beyond measure and I'm dying to see some SOB stand up and give us ANY sort of reason why this data was available on a system that wasn't air gapped. Who designed this steaming pile of shit and who approved it? Pretty please tell us as I bet there about 14million pitchforks and torches warming up somewhere to kick their ass. I want to see NAMES not this airy fairy shit of telling us they're investigating it and OBTW it happened 6 fucking months ago! Incompetent needs to be retired for this one and an entirely new word created just for these tools. Oh but wait they say they will give some sort of credit protection, that's a real comfort to some poor fuck who's elderly parents perhaps live in China or South Korea or any number of places where they might be vulnerable. Maybe it's time for some criminal charges? Gah this makes my head explode!

Okay, one of the batteries is also used in golf carts, point taken. Generally batteries for off-grid aren't general purpose run of the mill pieces of junk is my point unless someone is just trying to piece something together. Larger cells have more capacity and aren't going to be found in golf carts. The battery you mentioned is more along the lines of what I'd expect - it weighs over 115lbs. Cart batteries are more in the 60-70 range and have a great deal less capacity.

No, I'm not confused. converting AC to Dc is what they do in a grid-tie system. They're also partially responsible for cutting power in the event of a power failure so as not to backfeed the power grid and kill a lineman. In a system that also utilizes batteries these will be part of the system used to charge the batteries, except that when you buy grid-tie this isn't part of the package. If you bother to read some of the press materials about these batteries you will find mention of some hardware manufacturers and mention of "hybrid" inverters. That will be the gear needed to properly charge the lithium battery pack and to properly feed the home from the battery pack when the time is right or power is lost but NOT backfeed the grid one would hope. See here -> http://www.teslamotors.com/pre... and for ease try searching for Fronius to get an explanation.

There ARE some inverters now that will do this - with lead-acid batteries. I'm betting you will find that these don't use the same charging curve as lithium, if you've ever charged li-po packs for RC use you'll know why (lol). A firmware update might allow these to work and you'll primarily find these used for off-grid homes. Grid-tie seldom have battery packs because the cost nearly doubles and lead-acid batteries must be properly maintained which is a PITA. Oh and lead-acid are often replaced every 5-7 years or so depending upon how many times you've drawn them down too far or too fast and damaged them YMMV.

So yeah, I'm familiar with inverters and what the issues here are. What did you think you could just hook this up like a solar panel and it would charge and discharge properly? I think perhaps I'm not the one who's confused here...

Golf cart batteries?! Umm no. Forklift maybe, dedicated Trojan or Rolls Royce batteries perhaps. I'd bet most solar installs in the US aren't off grid and are grid-tied. Pretty sure the grid-tie inverters won't automatically be setup to correctly charge a battery bank either and since these are lithium I'll also bet that most inverters that CAN charge batteries are setup for lead acid and not these. Yeesh...

I'd agree except that at least one of my friends is about as non-techy as it gets and I've been much relieved at the lack of bitching since he switched from Adroid. It's been a serious relief!

This guy is techy enough to be getting articles posted to Slashdot but not good enough to figure out the things you describe? Certainly it's possible he's got an issue, and I ran into one myself I couldn't solve. I went to the Apple store, asked for help, and they provided me an answer that solved the problem. It wasn't without pain mind you but I'm simply not willing to have to become an expert at every single thing I run into issues with. I'm not willing to be baited by his stalking horse, not without a great deal more evidence by many more people that the platform has somehow deteriorated.

My favorite is watching my Android friends bitch because they've worn out yet another mini-USB socket. Or scream because lollipop whatever changed the entire UI of their system and they can't figure out how to do something. If I had a quarter for every time one of my Android toting friends asked ME to lookup something for them because they can't do it as quickly I'd be rich. One friend had me helping them for twenty minutes trying to move apps from their main memory to their SD stick. They had done it before on a different phone (I also helped them) but the UI had apparently changed and they were stuck again. Even better when it refused to move anything I recalled how their other phone couldn't move anything until they deleted crap - sure enough they cleared their web browser cache and freed up damn near a gig of space so they could start moving apps. I'm constantly asked if I can help with this Android quirk or that Android weirdness and I have to tell them to Google it themselves because frankly I just don't mess with Android, let alone who knows what "flavor" is on their particular device, often enough to claim a ton of expertise. I've got an Android tablet, it seldom gets used because it's just a PITA compared to my iPad or 6+. Android isn't bad mind you but it seems to lack the constancy Apple has tried to maintain and users seem to have to dig into the depths more often - it's crazy. When i need something there's usually an app for it and the app usually just works without fiddling. Yes, I'd like a cheaper device, yes I'd like to be able to more easily swap a battery, and sure occasionally I can't do something techy I might like but overall it sure seems to have fewer shortcomings judging from the whining of some friends - several of whom stopped whining after switching to Apple. Funny thing is I have to charge less often too!

My iPhone 6+ hasn't been booted in weeks, my iPad Air2 even longer. Occasionally an app will crash but the device itself doesn't have issues. Once upon a time I had an earlier piece of hardware that was giving me fits, an iPhone 4 I think. The solution sadly was to reload it from scratch and reload all of my apps - it ran perfectly after that. If this guy is having this many issues then he's got something dorked somehow and in my experience that will follow him even with iOS upgrades. Time to load it up from a scratch OS install! His supposition that iOS is somehow gotten less and less stable doesn't hold water as neither I nor any of my many friends running iPhones are having the sorts of issues he's describing...

Sad thing is I know of two kids AND an adult who have come down with Whooping Cough - living in Cali no less. Didn't "believe" in vaccinations but wondered why everyone couldn't shake a cough. Finally dragged them all to the Dr. and found out what it was! Surprise, they are ALL up to date now. All it took was catching a disease that could've been easily prevented to cure this moron of their stupid "beliefs". Damned lucky it wasn't something far worse and crippling.

Batteries as you suggest can nearly DOUBLE the cost of a solar install. This is why it's so seldom used in more built up areas that aren't facing $100K costs to connect. Batteries are also not maintenance free either. Batteries make the most sense when you're off in the woods somewhere and the electric company wants to charge you the equal of a mortgage to get a power line dragged in. Batteries will make much more sense when they're more cost effective but right now there's a ton of downsides in having them that only make sense when electric isn't easy to get. Using your water heater as a dump load or running things like say pool pumps off of excess generation instead of selling it to the grid at a discount make much more sense IMO.

The perception of a big bad utility didn't just magically appear. The efforts by the utilities have created this and they certainly haven't done any planning for alternative power - in fact they seem to fight it tooth and nail wherever possible. I'm not discounting what you say are issues and I appreciate the input but understand that there's distrust for good reason. Utilities need to start helping figure this out rather than simply fighting it. Most folks running solar wouldn't mind batteries IMO if the cost wasn't sky high and the additional regs a little less intrusive.

Umm, why couldn't that happen? Every car on the road with On-Star has a cell modem in it, why not every home with Grid-tie? Atomic Clock? Guess what you can use a GPS signal for?

I truly don't think what you propose is needed, not when a signaling medium already exists called a powerline, but what you propose isn't nearly as impossible as you think it is.

Gried-tie inverters already match up to the grid they're connected to, I see no need for them to have to have knowledge about the larger grid when devices to manage that - including selling excess - already exist at the power company.

There are already strict requirements that must be met in order to connect a solar system to the grid. The devices that do this have all sorts of requirements regarding what the power must look like regarding conditioning and interesting things like disconnection should power drop in order to prevent energizing an electrical line that a worker thinks is dead because he doesn't expect you to push power. Meters that "run backwards" are also used with grid-tie connections already.

As it stands today in our existing system if an electric producer has excess they sell it to OTHER grids tied to their system, it doesn't simply go to waste. On an island like Hawaii that may not be possible but on the mainland it certainly is and those connections also stretch into other countries like Canada.

In short - most all of your assumptions about how power is just being thrown willy-nilly onto the grid are incorrect and already accounted for. If you think an electric company is going to allow you to (legally) connect without having passed those standards you haven't done your research. Look up Grid-tie to learn more.